The present invention relates generally to the study of enterprise architectures, and more particularly, to the use of a relational database in studying and analyzing enterprise architectures, and even more specifically, to inventive models for describing the relationships between technological and organizational components of enterprise architectures. The inventive models are especially powerful when used in conjunction with the relational database.
Enterprise Architecture is a term first introduced by Zachman and later elaborated on by Spewak. An enterprise architecture can be used to answer questions such as how is the enterprise vulnerable to changes in key technologies and standards. Other questions are what are optimal priorities for technology upgrades and how are technology costs distributed over processes, organizations and locations.
Thus an enterprise architecture is used to solve strategic level problems for an enterprise. The enterprise can refer to human organizational systems ranging from small businesses to large legal entities (corporations, government departments) or their significant components. Information regarding the infrastructure of an organization is used in determining an enterprise architecture. An infrastructure of an enterprise is schematically illustrated in FIG. 1 and includes information about and interrelationships between the people 20 in the enterprise, the location(s) 22 of the enterprise, the processes 24 used in the enterprise, the information 26 used by the enterprise, and the technology components 28 of the enterprise.
Many organizations have a requirement to collect, analyze, and maintain a wide variety of enterprise architecture information. This information is generated/collected as part of an evolutionary process, which uses the organization can use to help develop, for example, a common MIS architecture. In the past, this type of information has been collected (if at all) on paper worksheets or, at best, spreadsheets. For example, the Department of Defense""s (DoD""s) Technical Architecture Model for Information Management (TAFIM) includes a large repertoire of sample worksheets for recording or baselining enterprise architecture data. Unfortunately, these methods make it difficult to gain the maximum flexibility and power from the architecture information, which must then be correlated and cross-referenced through largely manual processes.
The starting point of the design is the DoD Standards-based Architecture Planning Guide, Volume 4 of the TAFIM. This document introduced a comprehensive conceptual model for describing enterprise architectures that includes both organizational and technological components along with the relationships among them:
The intent of this model is to provide a structure for representing an enterprise architecture in enough detail to support strategic decision-making about future technology investment. When fully instantiated, this enterprise architecture provides guidance to the engineers who develop and maintain detailed system architectures for specific automated systems. Thus, the enterprise architecture focuses on the logical dependencies between an enterprise and its technologies, rather than on the physical connectivity between system components.
To develop and maintain such a model, a wide variety of information about the current enterprise architecture must be collected and analyzed. The TAFIM also provides detailed guidance about what information should be collected, and it supplies detailed examples of data collection forms for this purpose. Unfortunately, the linkage between these forms and the enterprise architecture model is not fully defined, and there are many implicit relationships between the forms that do not appear in the model at all. Therefore, a more detailed data model is required to implement an effective database for storing TAFIM-compatible enterprise architecture data.
Furthermore, there is a need to improve the value of this hard-to-collect information, and a relational database could be used as the information repository. If properly designed, a database could help answer a wide range of strategic questions about the current state and direction of an enterprise architecture. A database can be used to relate real world information which is frequently incomplete, estimated and inconsistent. The data structure needs to make collecting and saving disconnected lists of information easy and analysis inexpensive. Furthermore, it could form the basis of a reusable tool for the development and cross-comparison of multiple architectures for many different companies and organizations.
It is, therefore, an object of the invention to provide an enterprise architecture database capable of substantially overcoming the above-identified problems and substantially meeting the above-identified needs.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a unique data structure useable with a database program which can be used to help solve real world problems.
These and other objects of the present invention are achieved by providing a memory for storing data for access by a database program being executed on a computer system for evaluating an enterprise architecture. A data structure is stored in the memory with the data structure including information resident in a database used by the database program. The data structure includes a work flow model, an information model, and a technology model. The models are linked by the entities stored by the database program. The computer system executes the database program for evaluating the linkages between entities and how architectural changes to the enterprise affect the enterprise architecture by accessing the memory storing the data structure, and generates a result indicative of the linkages between entities.
These and other objects of the present invention are achieved by providing a computer implemented method for storing data for access by a database program being executed on the computer for evaluating an enterprise architecture. Entities are defined within at least one of a work flow model, an information model and a technology model. Data is classified and input into a work flow model, an information model and a technology model with each of the models having entities with each of the entities having at least one attribute. Each of the entities of the work flow model, the information model and the technology model are linked defining relationships between the linked models. The linked entities are stored and data is input on a storage device associated with a computer having a database program. The database program is capable of allowing users to input and search for how architectural changes to the enterprise affects the enterprise architecture. A screen is generated on which a user inputs a search to show the impact that a specific entity has on the enterprise architecture.
These and other objects of the present invention are achieved by providing an enterprise architecture database which includes a data structure comprising a work flow model including a plurality of entities, an information model including a plurality of entities; and a technology model including a plurality of entities. A database program is provided for managing the data structure to allow users to input and search for how architectural changes to the enterprise affects the enterprise architecture.
Still other objects and advantages of the present invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in this art from the following detailed description, wherein only the preferred embodiments of the invention are shown and described, simply by way of illustration of the best mode contemplated of carrying out the invention. As will be realized, the invention is capable of other and different embodiments, and its several details are capable of modifications in various obvious respects, all without departing from the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature, and not as restrictive.